Epoch is staffed by faculty and graduate students from the English Department creative writing program, and edited by Michael Koch. Epoch appears in September, January, and May, with issues generally running 128 to 160 pages.[1]

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The magazine was established in 1947 by Baxter Hathaway, who had come to the university the year before in order to start a creative writing program. Initially the magazine was a literary quarterly staffed by the English department.[1]

The magazine claims that "all" the major anthologies have reproduced its work, including Best American Essays, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, Editor's Choice Awards, Best of the West, and New Stories from the South.[1] The periodical also won the first O. Henry Award for best magazine of 1997.[2] Some stories from Epoch that have been reprinted in anthologies had been picked out of the slush pile by MFA students.[2]

According to the Cornell Chronicle, Shannon Ravenel, editor of the anthology New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, said of Epoch, "It's the best. [...] Epoch is just consistently excellent."[2]

C. Michael Curtis, a senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly, said he considers Epoch "one of the top literary magazines in the country in terms of the consistent quality of the writing that appears there." Curtis worked on the magazine staff as a graduate student from 1959 to 1963.[2]